California San Fernando Mission

Week 17

Once again I somehow find myself in a time rush so this one might be short. Then again, every time I say that it ends up being a 5 page essay haha. Here goes. In a phrase: this week was legit! Lots of good times were had, as always. It was a week of exchanges for me, and some good ones at that.

It started off on Tuesday with the Zone Leaders. Elder Smith come over with me to Elder Stark and I’s area while Elder Stark went up with Elder Wall. Beforehand it was quite the trip to their apartment in order to start it off (we live across the hall from each other). It was such a swaggin exchange! It rained, a lot, and was soooooooo fun. Mostly because we found a couple sweet new jumps on the sidewalk along the way haha. Actually, with that, I’ve finally got the mountain-bike-bunny-hop move workin for me so I pretty much get some major air now. Sign us up for the X-Games or something. One jump in particular we found is basically a 45 degree angle ~3 feet off the level ground and now we may or may not go a little out of the way on order to hit it every time haha. But we had some nice lessons with some old investigators we found again. They’re all pretty cool so the area is looking super good right now!

Let’s take a quick pause from exchanges and talk about the weather. It’s been bi-polar like crazy. I think last Sunday it was mid 80s, then after the rain on Tuesday it got down to the 40s, then just yesterday it got back up to 90. What. #CaliLife We made the great/terrible decision to wear cardigans on Thursday when we thought it was cold out but it ended up blazing hot and we almost died I’m pretty sure so when we came back for dinner we took them off then went back out again…to find out it was cold again. Ugh. The struggle is real.

So the other exchange: Elder Bowman came here with me on Friday. We talked with everyone that day. All of the appointments we had planned fell through until the last hour of the day, including our member dinner haha. Oops. In the meantime we decided to #yolo it and literally talk with everyone in our sight. And we did just that. I think we got up to 50 by the end of the day? Good times. There are some weird people over here. I can’t remember one in particlular because by the end of the day my brain was fried, but trust me: Cali homies are a little strange. At 8:00, the lat hour of the day before we head home, we found and taught an investigator of ours and set a baptismal date with him! It’s a little sketch at this point but at least his wife told us she’s super appreciative of us coming over to help her husband “find God”. Then again she probbly repeated about 2397534512 times that she’s “already part of another church” and she’s “content with that but thanks us for coming to help her husband”. Whatever. Soon…

Update on Virgilio: he is chevere. He finally got off work yesterday to come to church! He’s scheduled for baptism this next Sunday but we’re probably moving it a couple weeks to be able to teach him everything and make sure he’s prepared. Not a doubt in my mind he will be though. He’s already at 2 Nefi 9 in the Book of Mormon. And he told us he wants to go back to the beginning to better understand the parts about Joseph Smith and how the Book of Mormon came to be. So cool. Just yesterday we taught him Keep the Sabbath Day Holy and we didn’t even have to ask him to talk with him boss to get Sundays off! He was just like: “I know I have to talk with my boss because I want to be able to go to church with you hermanos to learn more and I want to keep this commandment from God” Yuhhhhhhhhhh. Love it. Def let you know how he’s doing soon.

That’s all I’ve got this week. Honestly, for the us and the whole district in general, it was a week of miracles! As always of course, but a little more than usual. Hope you all are doing well. Have a great week! Enjoy the print versions of Conference online (I sure am, don’t you worry)!